3 minutes
by holygoof101
Summary: She hasn't been sleeping well. She keeps having the same dream over and over. Rachel-centric DRABBLE with Finchel implications.


A/N: This is all over the place but I just needed to write tonight so super short Rachel centric drabble inspired by (amongst other things) Fiction by The XX

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She's awake again. And it's because of a dream. For the last month she hasn't been sleeping well. She keeps having this same dream, no matter how many times she wakes up, it still comes back. The same dream, over and over again, night after night.

It started the night she back got from Lima. That night she lied to Brody about her and Finn. She had planned to tell him she had seen Finn. Her plan before she left New York was to tell Brody if she saw Finn. A part of her wanted to be able to use the information to make him jealous. So she was going to volunteer the information about all or any moments with Finn. That plan changed the moment she checked to make sure the hotel room door closed behind her. That moment she decided she and Finn weren't any of Brody's business. She told herself ff they were having an open adult relationship then she and Finn shouldn't matter to him. So when he asked about it, she lied. And it was that night the dreams started and never stopped.

In the dream she's standing on a front porch that faces the street in Lima she grew up on. But it's not her dads' front porch. It's a different porch and different house behind her. A different lawn in front of her. She can still smell where the grass has been freshly cut. And it's summer because it's hot, so hot she's sweating. She looks out over the lawn to see a car passing by the house a little too fast. She calls out for someone to be careful. That's when a little boy comes into focus. A little boy she's only seen in this dream. A little boy that can't be more than three or four year old. He picks up a football from the grass before he looks back to her.

"We being careful mom." The little boy yells. He looks away before cupping the football between both his hands before he uses all his strength to hurl the football in the direction of someone else. A silhouette enters the picture. The sun behind him blinds her eyes from making out his face, but the same sunlight casts a shadow of his figure so she can clearly see his actions. The sun shadowed figure looks at her and despite the sun she can see a grin that shows a dimple in the corner of his mouth before he leans back in preparation to toss the football back to the boy.

That's the moment she always wakes up. She never makes it any further in the dream.. She never figures out exactly which house on her old street the porch she's standing on belongs to. She never sees the shadowed figure throw the football back to the little boy. She never knows if the little boy catches the ball. It's always right before the throw she wakes up.

The first few times she had the dream she didn't think anything of it. It was just a dream; she'd had plenty of dreams. Most of the ones she could remember were about Broadway and being on stage. She's even dreamed of having her own kids before. When she was little she would dream of having her own kids. Dreams filled with happiness and of teaching them to sing and stand up to bullies. Dreams of showing them all the childhood things they're supposed to learn from a mom. Things she never learned. But those dreams were never as real as the one she keeps having. The dream of a dimpled little boy playing football in a front yard with a shadow father figure.

She wants to play it off as just another dream that isn't any different from the ones she's had of Broadway and the stage and all the other big dreams she's had. The problem is even right now, while she's chasing and trying to be who she should be to make those dreams come true... They never felt as real as the one that now won't go away.

And she knows where the little boy calling her mom in her dreams got his dimples because she knows the figure that the shadows are hiding. She'd know the dimples and the figure anywhere. And it scares her because in the dream she's happy. She's had a million dreams before and never in one of them is she as happy as she is standing on that front porch in the dream that won't go away. It's why she wakes up in panic. It's why she tries to make it go away before she goes to sleep. It's why she tries to ignore the reality of it before she even goes to sleep. Because she knows the happiness might not even be a reality.

So she hasn't been sleeping well for the last month and she knows why. She knows why and she knows what she needs to do. At least she knows what she needs to do right now because every decision she makes from here out will be affected by that decision.

She closes her eyes and releases a breath. It says to wait three minutes. It seems like a moment like this would take more than three minutes. But three minutes is all it takes.

No three minutes will ever be longer. Three minutes before she can go back to bed and sleep again. Three minutes and she can stop worrying. She only has three more minutes of waiting, of wondering. Three minutes and she'll know. Three minutes before she can go climb back into bed with Brody and her fears will settle. She can get back to who she's trying to be. Back the life she's been making for herself. But what if... What if the dreams meant something? She knows the figure, the shows the face even if in her dreams it's shielded by the sun. What if the life she never knew she wanted is in all those dreams she's been having. What if...


End file.
